Hit Song Inspired by Narrows of the Harpeth

If you’re a country music fan, you’re probably familiar with singer John Anderson and his hit songs, “Swinging”, “Seminole Wind” and “I’m Just An Old Chunk Of Coal”. But you may not know that one of those top five chart toppers was inspired and written by the late songwriter, Billy Joe Shaver, as he climbed the steep Bluff Trail at the Harpeth River State Park.

The back story, as told by Shaver in an interview with the Songfacts.com website, goes as follows:

“I was about to die because I’d been doing so much dope and just everything in the world you could think of and drinking and just about driving everybody crazy. There was this place outside of Nashville that’s called the Narrows of the Harpeth River and there’s this peak-like thing out there, and it’s a real sheer drop-off cliff. You have to go up a real treacherous path to get to it.  Not many people know about it, but my son had showed it to me. And it was at the top of this thing that I arrived one night when I felt I was about to die. There was an alter up there, it looked like the wind, rain or something had hewn the alter out and it looked like a mushroom. There was just a small place between the alter and the sheer cliff. I was just so ashamed of myself for what I’d done, I asked God to help me. I thought I’m just a worthless good-for-nothing dragging everybody down. I found myself on my knees with my hands and elbows on top of the alter and asking God to help me. That’s when he gave me that song.

All of the sudden everything brightened up for me and this inaudible voice told me to go, to get out of Nashville. I left Nashville and I went cold turkey on everything. I quit smoking, drinking, doping, doing the whole smear."

The song that Billy Joe believed God gave him on the Narrows of the Harpeth Bluff Trail was, “I’m Just An Old Chunk Of Coal (But I’m Gonna Be A Diamond Someday)”. The lyrics recall Billy Joe’s troubled emotional state the evening in 1980 when he climbed the Bluff Trail over the Montgomery Bell Tunnel and pleaded with God to help him beat his drug and alcohol addiction.

He stated that he came down the Bluff Trail “singing the first part of the song” and when he got to the foot of the trail, he had the song half written.  County singer John Anderson recorded Billy Joe’s song, and it reached #4 on Billboard Magazine’s Hot Country Singles in March of 1981.

“I’m Just An Old Chunk of Coal” was also recorded by Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson & Miranda Lambert.

Meet Park Manager, Bill Morton

If you knew Bill Morton in his youth, you wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he grew up to be a park ranger. Everything Bill did in his formative years suggested he was destined for a career with Tennessee’s state parks. 

Bill was reared in White Bluff only three miles from Montgomery Bell State Park. He’d ride his bicycle on park trails and roads where he connected with nature and developed a love for the outdoors. When Bill was old enough, he worked five summers as an attendant at the Park’s boat dock and later became a Seasonal Interpretive Ranger. 

As a Boy Scout, Bill acquired a passion for conservation and became one of only 5% of Scouts to fulfill the requirements of leadership, service, and outdoor skills needed to attain the highly regarded Eagle Scout rank. 

Bill expanded his interest in preserving nature when he attended the University of Tennessee at Martin where he graduated in 1997 with a degree in Natural Resource Management.

The next year Bill was sworn in as a full-time Park Ranger and served his initial assignment at Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park. In 2001 he moved to Radnor Lake State Natural Area and in 2004 he became the first ranger at the newly formed Harpeth River State Park. Before then, The Narrows and Mound Bottom historical sites were managed as part of Montgomery Bell State Park.

In 2022, Bill accepted the position of Park Manager at the Harpeth River State Park and concentrated on the design and construction of a visitor’s center and picnic pavilions overlooking the Indigenous Mississippian Historical site at Mound Bottom. 

Bill married his college sweetheart, Melinda, who is a school librarian in Fairview. The couple are parents of daughter Mallory, a freshman psychology major at Belmont University.

Be sure to say hello to Bill the next time you cross paths at the Park. Thank you, Bill, for all you do!

Meet Ranger Lisa Housholder

After graduating from Harpeth Hall School in Nashville, Park Ranger Lisa Householder’s twin sister Lana decided to attend Vanderbilt University like her dad did. But Lisa thought Texas might be a fun place, so she enrolled at Baylor University in Waco, where she majored in Environmental Studies and Earth Science. Lisa envisioned a career as a private-sector environmentalist.

After receiving her degree, she moved to France and lived with Lana for a year, but she was homesick for her Nashville friends and family, so she moved back home and went to work at the Poison Center at Vanderbilt Medical Center. Still unsure of what she wanted to do, she enrolled in one of Baylor’s continuing education courses in Costa Rica. When she returned to Nashville a friend suggested that her degree in environmental studies and her love of the outdoors were the perfect combo for being a park ranger.

The friend also noted that the Tennessee Division of Parks was offering seven-month seasonal ranger positions that would allow her to see if she liked park work. Lisa was open to the idea and applied for a seasonal job. Her application was accepted, but the only seasonal opening was in public relations. It entailed traveling to baseball parks all across the state, setting up an exhibit about state parks, and mingling with baseball fans to inform them about what Tennessee Parks has to offer.

Lisa has always considered herself a “people person,” so she took the job as a seasonal marketing ranger. Occasionally, Rangers who worked at State Parks near local Baseball fields where Lisa set up her exhibits would drop by to help with her marketing. Getting to hang out with those full-time rangers stimulated Lisa’s interest in becoming a career park ranger. She applied for a ranger position and graduated from the Tennessee Law Enforcement Training Academy, where she earned her certification as an Emergency Medical Responder and attended classes to become a Certified Heritage Interpreter.

Lisa admits that when she started her ranger job, she’d never driven a pick-up truck, never operated a chainsaw, and never even sat on a commercial grass mower. But today she’s adept at using all those Park Ranger tools. She’s become a seasoned Park Ranger whether she’s directing heavy holiday park traffic or guiding tours through Mound Bottom or grabbing a chainsaw to remove a tree that’s fallen across a Park roadway.

Lisa’s fascination with archeology and her training as a Heritage Interpreter allows her to guide groups through Harpeth River State Park’s eight-hundred-year-old Mound Bottom Archaeological Site, where visitors learn about the Indigenous Mississippian Culture that flourished in this area for three hundred years. She also enjoys touring park guests through remnants of the 1930’s Hidden Lake water park and spa, one of Harpeth River State Park’s seven historical sites.

Being assigned to Harpeth River State Park allows Lisa to live near old friends and her mom and dad. Twin sister Lana has a career with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC and

Lisa’s father, Attorney Alan Householder, is a founder and board member of Friends of the Harpeth River State Park.

Next time you see Ranger Lisa at the Park, be sure to say hello!